Marbled Bundt Cake (Chocolate, Orange and Chilli)

I returned to another old favourite for my son's 40th birthday cake. Both he and I have birthdays in the first half of July, so in truth, it was a shared cake, and he expressed no preference as to what I baked.

The recipe originally came from Alice Medrich,  but over the years I've made a few tweaks. Most importantly I've reduced the size of the cake to fit the only bundt tin I have and converted the American cup measurements to metric weights and volumes. I've also replaced the pepper in the recipe with cayenne pepper, and added the finely grated zest of an orange.

The cake is made with oil (olive or sunflower, depending on whether or not you want the extra flavour of olive oil) and cold milk and eggs, so is quick to make without needing to wait for ingredients to get to room temperature. The two batters are just layered into the pan and the marbling is formed by the movement of the batters in the tin as the cake cooks.

I was a little disappointed with the frosting - it didn't flow as far as I'd hoped, and then didn't set as firmly as I expected either - but that might have been due to the temperature in the kitchen - it was the hottest day of the year! I wouldn't usually frost this cake, but it was for a celebration!

I used another favourite - a Mary Berry recipe - for the frosting. Melt 90g of dark chocolate and 30g of butter together, then beat in 1 tablespoon of golden syrup and 1 1/2 tablespoons of milk. If used straight away, it should be a glaze, although I usually wait until it's cooler before spreading it on top of a cake to give a fudgy frosting. This time I wanted a flowing glaze, but it was too thick to cooperate! 

The revised recipe for the cake is written out in full in this post here on my blog, so there's no need to repeat it here. I will add that I now prepare bundt tins with a homemade lining paste, following Nancy Birtwhistle's recipe, which you can find in this recipe on her website. Once made, the paste (equal quantities of oil, flour and Trex cooking fat) keeps for many months in the fridge, in an airtight jar, and just needs bringing up to room temperature before use. I've used it for a few years now and it's never failed - the cakes have always released from the bundt tin perfectly.

Cider and 5-Spice Bundt Cake

Wow! I wish I'd tried this Nigella Lawson recipe for a Cider and 5-Spice Bundt cake years ago.  It was superb!

I tried a scaled down version of the recipe, one Christmas a few years ago, but used a different spice mix and ginger wine instead of cider. So I knew the recipe worked, but had no idea what the impact of using 5-Spice would be.

Nigella originally called this a Cider and 5-Spice Gingerbread, but changed the name because the ginger element (fresh root ginger) isn't particularly strong. The method of making the cake is essentially that of a gingerbread - combine sugar with the wet ingredients, then mix in the remaining dry ingredients - but because oil is used rather than butter, there's no melting or other heating involved.

Once the ingredients were weighed and measured out, the cake was really quick to put together. The most time consuming operation was grating the lump of root ginger!

Instead of buying cake release spray to use to prepare a bundt tin, I've started using a home-made version. This is partly because the Dr Oetker brand of cake release spray is no longer on the market, and none of the supermarkets stock a replacement product, but partly because it's cheaper.

The recipe I have seems to have originated from the 2014 GBBO winner, Nancy Birtwhistle. However I can't find it on her website, only on a few twitter videos.  There is something about it here, but basically, it's equal parts of Trex (white hard vegetable fat), plain flour and vegetable oil. I made up a small batch, using 50g of each of Trex and flour, and 50mls of sunflower oil, which is going to be enough for several cakes. It keeps in a jar in the fridge until the shortest 'best before' date of the products you've used (or use your nose - fat that has gone rancid won't smell very good).

I allowed it to warm up a little before use, and it was then easy to brush onto the bundt tin with a pastry brush. I think it works better than the commercial spray, probably because you can easily see if you've missed any areas, and can also put on a thicker layer if you've any doubts. My cake just plopped out without any assistance from me, after about 15 minutes cooling in the tin.

Because I was taking the cake to my local Cake Club (a legacy from the now defunct Clandestine Cake Club meetings), and the theme was Festive/New Year, I prettied up the cake with a lemon glacé icing and some sparkly sprinkles on top, but I wouldn't usually bother with anything more than a dusting of icing sugar.

The cake had a lovely close-textured but light crumb and  the 5-spice gave a unique flavour which emphasised the aniseed elements of the mixture - I used Bart brand which contained, in decreasing order, star anise, cassia, fennel,cloves and ginger - and the nutmeg. It was a very tasty alternative to a traditional gingerbread. Although it was an optional extra, the lemon glacé icing was a good contrast to the spice - Nigella says she likes this cake with a salted caramel sauce, but I think that would be too rich, and sweet, for me.